Mollie King
‘I’ve learnt to be proud of my body’
Are you really going to sit there eating a chocolate bar with a side order of popcorn during a Women’s Health interview?’ I ask Mollie King, all dewy of skin and blonde of hair and flat of stomach as I go in for a handful of her sweet ’n’ salty. Mollie laughs, swallows, then laughs some more. We’re in a studio bigger than your average archipelago in London’s King’s Cross, down some alley that, 10 years ago, you probably wouldn’t want to walk down. Some of the crew have been here for hours, building one of the most intricate sets WH has ever attempted – a labyrinth of mirrors upon mirrors divided by mirrors – and we’re somewhere on the scale of calm to carnage. Every now and then, a cute dog with tight curls makes a cameo, because every shoot should have one. And everyone on set has been instructed to wear black because… oh, something to do with light and reflections and physics. Ask Siri. The only one not obliging is Mollie. And the dog. ‘Oh my gosh, I could see it from every. Single. Angle!’ she gasps. The singer’s talking about her bum, or at least I hope she is. There must be a good 10 people watching said bum, from all angles. ‘ You try not being self-conscious in that situation,’ she insists. ‘It would be weird if I wasn’t, right?’ Downright crazy. Mollie’s laughing through all of this, by the way, and her laugh’s bigger than Santa’s, high on proffered sherry. Goofier than most very pretty girls allow themselves to be, her body language is giving me the thumbs up and she does that very clever thing that celebrities do – says nice things about her interviewer, which gets me every time. So I reciprocate, as it’s only polite. ‘So, you’re on the cover of Women’s Health because you’re a good person who looks gorgeous. Discuss.’ That laugh again. Then: ‘Oh my gosh, do you think so? Thank you! But I don’t feel like that at all. Well, the gorgeous thing anyway. I’m just so proud to be on the cover again. I can’t quite believe it.’ [Mollie graced our cover in our first year of publication, 2012]. There now follows Mollie King’s WH cover acceptance speech, in full. ‘I would just like to inspire women to go for it, really go for it. Everyone has hang-ups, but you just have to be proud of how you look and accept who you are, and if I can try to make women feel more confident in themselves, then that’s incredible. Because, trust me, I’ve got things on that cover I’m not happy with. And I think we all do, whether it’s on the beach or whether it’s by the pool. But I just think, don’t let it hold you back. Just go for it!’ While we’re getting the tea towels printed and you’re cutting and pasting and posting the above to your social feeds, Mollie’s talking me through the days leading up to a cover photo shoot, one where all and sundry get to see you in your bra and pants. ‘I’ve been so busy with Strictly that it really crept up on me. Then I was like, “Oh my gosh, it’s in two days’ time!”’ Mollie never swears, by the way. Not ever. Not even when my own potty mouth gives her carte blanche to do so. ‘So yesterday I got up and panicked and thought, “Sit-ups! I need to do sit-ups.” So I’m in my kitchen and I get my mat out, and my dog was walking around thinking, “What the hell is Mum doing?”’ Talking of Strictly, by the time you’re reading this, Mollie may or may not still be in the biggest show on telly, but probably is. From The Saturdays to Saturday night telly, she’s a light entertainment show’s dream, all lithe and camera-ready and crazypopular on social, so much so that Strictly bosses were actually badgering her for ages. ‘Oh, they’ve been asking me for a couple of years, but it was never the right time. But,’ she’s keen to point out, ‘this is professional dancing. Everyone’s like, “Oh, you’ve got so much experience performing,” which of course I do, but I’ve never done anything like this. I’ve never had training. I’ve never been to stage school.’ But let’s look at the positives here. She might come out of the show even fitter than she went in. ‘Fingers crossed!’ (Insert really big laugh.) Back to those hang-ups. Mollie’s got a list longer than all our arms of the bits she doesn’t like and would like to improve or replace. We know, we know, some of us don’t have violins small enough to cope, but she’s not being disingenuous. ‘There are bits that I would like to… okay, pretty much every part of my body I’d like to improve. I would love to do more sport to get fit. I need to work on my obliques to try to nip in my tummy. But I do think you get to a point where you have to accept yourself and say, “This is my figure, and I could work on it, but I’m never going to drastically change it.” I’d like more booty, but I’m always going to have a tomboy shape. I’m never going to be Nicki Minaj.’ I tell her that’s probably for the best. ‘I think it might be, yeah!’ (Laughs.)
‘I’D LIKE MORE BOOTY BUT I KNOW I’LL ALWAYS HAVE A TOMBOY SHAPE’